President Obama got it right about Ebola. Will Australia?

When the news of the latest Ebola outbreak came out, I feared that the Western world would approach this problem in the same way as it approaches health problems in general. The strategy is to get a pharmaceutical fix - a vaccine, and/or a cure - a free market economy strategy. This could not work in Western Africa, for two reasons:

1. With the rapid spread of Ebola, these fixes would come too late - thousands of deaths too late.

2. The pharmaceutical companies owe it to their shareholders to not invest $millions in developing drugs unless they are pretty sure of getting those $millions back, plus some - and who would pay for this development?

So the prevailing paradigm of free market solutions and chemical fixes is not the solution, even though vaccines and drug treatments might play some role.

Since the first recognised outbreak of Ebola disease, in Zaire in 1976, there have been over 40 outbreaks - in Sudan, Gabon, Uganda, Democratic Republic of Congo. These were contained gradually, - the Western world did not worry too much about them - no need for a global strategy.

This time with the disease spreading to great numbers of people, this time, Ebola is a global crisis that must be addressed by an international effort. What sort of international effort? It won't work to just throw money to pharmaceutical corporations This time what is needed is collective action - a public interest solution - with people "on the ground" setting up clean hospitals with proper infection controls, especially for staff protection, setting up efficient surveillance systems, and developing community understanding and education.

By August 24 the 2014 more than 120 health workers had died from the current Ebola outbreak. It is understandable that health workers are reluctant to join the courageous charity teams that now struggle to treat the patients."It's despair on all fronts," said Plyler, an American doctor who led the Liberian disaster response efforts for the international relief organization Samaritan's Purse.

It has to be a huge and rapid effort to improve conditions for these impoverished West African communities. That is not something that the rich world has bothered about before, in relation to so many diseases of poor communities. HIV AIDS, TB, malaria, yellow fever dengue fever, polio - these diseases continue to take their toll in Africa, South America, Asia with many thousands of deaths, and the "developed world" remains complacent.

The Ebola epidemic raises problems beyond the medical - the potential wipeout of national economies, conflict at borders, even the spectre of the Ebola virus as a weapon of terrorism.

While several non government agencies, notably Medecins Sans Frontieres are working in West Africa, government help is essential. Cuba and China are joining in the USA campaign. The Australian government is so keen to send people to Ukraine and Iraq - but what about West Africa ?